Say you own a Magic Mouse or a multitouch Macbook: gestures are great, aren’t they? You can perform actions by simply tapping / moving your fingers on the multitouch surface and this is a huge time saver in my opinion. Gestures are even better than keyboard shortcuts sometimes.
Now, Mac OS has a big problem with gestures: you can’t assign custom gestures to the applications you like. I mean, why can’t I tell Tweetie to refresh with a simple gesture? Now, I’d hate to say so but..
..There’s an app for that.
BetterTouchTool brings multitouch gestures to every app installed on your Mac. On first run, you’ll have to choose your multitouch input device: Magic Mouse, Multitouch Macbook or Macbook. I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro, so I chose the second option. Let’s move on.
The application is lightweight and straightforward: you can pick up the applications on the left side, assign the gestures on the right. Basically, BetterTouchTool acts like this: once you’ve picked up a gesture, you’ll have to choose a key command which will be activated with that gesture. For example, I can’t stand Tweetie’s refresh keyboard shortcut Cmd + Shift + R. Thanks to BetterTouchTool I can finally refresh Tweetie with a three finger swipe up gesture.
And this works for Safari, Mail, Coda, everything.
Awesome.
What’s so great about BTT is that it’s a beta, it’s stable and you can even decide to hide the application (even from the menubar) and let it run in the background. This is why I love the Mac indie development scene.
I can’t wait to try BTT with a Magic Mouse.
